I just purchased a Kindle, and I wish to have the title of each book include not only the series name, but also the over-arching meta series name and index, if available. For example:

The book "Rogue Squadron" is book one of the series "X-Wing", which is itself a part of the meta-series "Star Wars". I would like the title to appear as "Star Wars: X-Wing - 01 - Rogue Squadron". I have created a custom field in Calibre titled "Meta Series" which holds the data "Star Wars". I'd want to be sure that the colon or dash marks don't appear if there is nothing in the fields.

How would I go about setting up a pegboard for this? Any help is appreciated.

Do you have a Kindle ?
Did you ever want Calibre to show "Read Status" of your books in a column ?
Automagically ?

Then the following might for you as well.

You must be running Calibre 0.7.40 or newer to use this.
Also you must use "Fetch annotations" from you Kindle.

The following example is based on the following Kindler requirements:
"What I want is a custom column to show the "Last Opened" Date if Last location read > 95%.
If the book shows >0% but < 95%, I want the column to show "Reading"
And if the book is 0%, or unopened, the column should show "Not Read".

Howto "Fetch annotations" from you Kindle:
Start Calibre,
Connect your Kindle, wait a bit,
Click on the arrow just to the right of the "Send to Device" icon,
choose "Fetch Annotations"
and the Kindle "Book status" is added to the Calibre book details, in the comments.

You should Fetch fresh Annotations everytime you connect your Kindle to get updated information.

The best/fastest way, but hardest way, to get the needed information into a custom column, is to use Python Template functions.
Sounds scary, but don't worry. Copy/paste is your helper

Simply do as follows:

1) go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Template Functions.

2) in the Function box type: kindle_read_status

3) in the Arg count box type: 4

4) in the Documentation box, paste the following:

Code:

Check if the associated field contains a kindle annotation for percent read.
If not, return no_page_read_str.
If annotations are found, then compare that percent against is_read_pct.
If the val is larger, then return date,
if the val is >0 and < is_read_pct return is_reading_str.
Otherwise return is_not_read_str.
One usage: {comments:kindle_read_status(95,Not Read,Reading)}
( use the above when defining your custom column )
95 goes into variable is_read_pct
Not Read goes into variable no_page_read_str
Reading goes into variable is_reading_str
Feel free to change the %, the test strings to suit your needs.
Do this in the custom column definition.

Very interesting, one question though: Why does this new column not show up in the columns section on the left? Now I have to go "read" books I have already read so that they are all registering correctly. Thank you all for this one.

Me again, I am having a little trouble with where the data is being inputted from the annotation. This is what the format is:

Code:

1/24/2011
Last Page Read: Location 721 (99%)

But with that data it is adding a + to the tags field and 1/24/2011 to the read-status field. How do I get it to not add anything to the tags field and to add the read status with the percentage to the read_status field?

Me again, I am having a little trouble with where the data is being inputted from the annotation. This is what the format is:

Code:

1/24/2011
Last Page Read: Location 721 (99%)

But with that data it is adding a + to the tags field and 1/24/2011 to the read-status field. How do I get it to not add anything to the tags field and to add the read status with the percentage to the read_status field?

Hi
I can confirm that something is going on with the tags, adding a +
Don't use/show tags myself, so this I missed.
Will try to find out what/why, but still new to this.

The example will only return one value. The example wanted to use 95% as the comparison value.
Try changing you costum column definition to

I don't know why a + is being added as a tag, but when creating a catalog in calibre I believe every book that has a + as a tag treated as read.

Hi dwanthny
Yep - did a lot of Googling, to confirm this.
I'm sure that the + is added by "Fetch Annotations", no matter which custom columns you might have had.
I would guess the idea was to Mark a book "read" by adding the + to the tags. This was way before custom columns etc.
Not sure what value for inserting the + is